A product development project was set up at the Finnish company SKS Control Oy in order to renew an older product portfolio consisting of a number of different devices used in electrically implemented motion control systems. These products include, for example, a range of programmable CPU units, display devices, HMIs, and I/O devices. This work focuses on the process of developing one of the new products, which is an EtherCAT-based fieldbus module. The purpose of this product is to replace a number of older products by integrating their functionality into one extensive modular-structured device. Along with this, the new module is intended to provide various new features that were hard or impossible to implement with the older products.
The part of the product development work which is presented here consists of three main parts. The first one presents some of the most relevant theoretical background behind the field-bus module along with a list of wanted features and properties. Together with the theory, this part discusses a way of satisfying these design constraints while using a module structure similar to the other products in the portfolio.
Second, the work covers the hardware design of the module by dividing it into smaller functional blocks and discussing them separately. Here the focus lies on the electronic design rather than the mechanical.
Finally, the work includes a section about the software work included in the product development. This part mainly focuses on the hardware description language VHDL and, to a smaller extent, on additional software, such as C, used in the product or together with it.